Political commentary
Sep. 12th, 2004 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sihayadesignsA Mythic Reality
by Paul Krugman
September 7, 2004
New York Times
Political commentary that I found quite worth the read.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sed_non_satiata for the link.
The best book I've read about America after 9/11 isn't about either America or 9/11. It's "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," an essay on the psychology of war by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any poll analysis or focus group, it explains why President Bush, despite policy failures at home and abroad, is ahead in the polls.
War, Mr. Hedges says, plays to some fundamental urges. "Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours," he says, "is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver." When war psychology takes hold, the public believes, temporarily, in a "mythic reality" in which our nation is purely good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who isn't our ally is our enemy.
This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power.
One striking part of the book describes Argentina's reaction to the 1982 Falklands war. Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, the leader of the country's military junta, cynically launched that war to distract the public from the failure of his economic policies. It worked: "The junta, which had been on the verge of collapse" just before the war, "instantly became the saviors of the country."
The point is that once war psychology takes hold, the public desperately wants to believe in its leadership, and ascribes heroic qualities to even the least deserving ruler. National adulation for the junta ended only after a humiliating military defeat.
George W. Bush isn't General Galtieri: America really was attacked on 9/11, and any president would have followed up with a counterstrike against the Taliban. Yet the Bush administration, like the Argentine junta, derived enormous political benefit from the impulse of a nation at war to rally around its leader.
Another president might have refrained from exploiting that surge of support for partisan gain; Mr. Bush didn't.
And his administration has sought to perpetuate the war psychology that makes such exploitation possible.
Step by step, the fight against Al Qaeda became a universal "war on terror," then a confrontation with the "axis of evil," then a war against all evil everywhere. Nobody knows where it all ends.
What is clear is that whenever political debate turns to Mr. Bush's actual record in office, his popularity sinks. Only by doing whatever it takes to change the subject to the war on terror - not to what he's actually doing about terrorist threats, but to his "leadership," whatever that means - can he get a bump in the polls.
Last week's convention made it clear that Mr. Bush intends to use what's left of his heroic image to win the election, and early polls suggest that the strategy may be working. What can John Kerry do?
Campaigning exclusively on domestic issues won't work. Mr. Bush must be held to account for his dismal record on jobs, health care and the environment. But as Mr. Hedges writes, when war psychology makes a public yearn to believe in its leaders, "there is little that logic or fact or truth can do to alter the experience."
To win, the Kerry campaign has to convince a significant number of voters that the self-proclaimed "war president" isn't an effective war leader - he only plays one on TV.
This charge has the virtue of being true. It's hard to find a nonpartisan national security analyst with a good word for the Bush administration's foreign policy. Iraq, in particular, is a slow-motion disaster brought on by wishful thinking, cronyism and epic incompetence.
If I were running the Kerry campaign, I'd remind people frequently about Mr. Bush's flight-suit photo-op, when he declared the end of major combat. In fact, the war goes on unabated. News coverage of Iraq dropped off sharply after the supposed transfer of sovereignty on June 28, but as many American soldiers have died since the transfer as in the original invasion.
And I'd point out that while Mr. Bush spared no effort preparing for his carrier landing - he even received underwater survival training in the White House pool - he didn't prepare for things that actually mattered, like securing and rebuilding Iraq after Baghdad fell.
Will it work? I don't know. But to win, Mr. Kerry must try to puncture the myth that Mr. Bush's handlers have so assiduously created.
I agree with the bulk of this commentary completely. I find it completely distasteful that the president is largely campaigning via scare tactics and propaganda. Let's distract from the open wound that is our economy. Let's distract from the 1,000+ lives lost in Iraq, the bulk of which were lost after the war officially ended. Let's all exploit those who died in 9/11 so I can have a heroic image (this, I find egregiously unforgivable). Let's muddy the waters-- casting shadows on Kerry's record to distract from the fact that Bush drank his way through Vietnam, never serving at all. I did some reading about this Swift Boat nonsense. The bulk of the kerfluffle? Was the enemy firing when Kerry helped pull a comrade to safety? Some (on Kerry's boat) say yes. Some (on the sinking boat) say no. This is ridiculous. Regardless, people were plucked out of the damn river and lives were preserved.
This is dirty politics at its filthiest, and I cannot fathom another four years filled with the absolute horseshit that is the Protection of Marriage Act and the Patriot Act and... well, just about every piece of legislation Bush has proposed that is aimed at narrowing the freedoms of others.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin.
Our ammendments live on. Peaceful protestors being arrested? Taxpaying citizens being denied equal rights? Womens' rights to control over their own bodies being threatened? This is not America. This is a dictatorship in training.
I need a political icon. The election draws nigh. People, if you haven't registered to vote, do it. Time is running out, and in this election, every vote will matter.
by Paul Krugman
September 7, 2004
New York Times
Political commentary that I found quite worth the read.
Thanks to
sed_non_satiata for the link.The best book I've read about America after 9/11 isn't about either America or 9/11. It's "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," an essay on the psychology of war by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any poll analysis or focus group, it explains why President Bush, despite policy failures at home and abroad, is ahead in the polls.
War, Mr. Hedges says, plays to some fundamental urges. "Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours," he says, "is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver." When war psychology takes hold, the public believes, temporarily, in a "mythic reality" in which our nation is purely good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who isn't our ally is our enemy.
This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power.
One striking part of the book describes Argentina's reaction to the 1982 Falklands war. Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, the leader of the country's military junta, cynically launched that war to distract the public from the failure of his economic policies. It worked: "The junta, which had been on the verge of collapse" just before the war, "instantly became the saviors of the country."
The point is that once war psychology takes hold, the public desperately wants to believe in its leadership, and ascribes heroic qualities to even the least deserving ruler. National adulation for the junta ended only after a humiliating military defeat.
George W. Bush isn't General Galtieri: America really was attacked on 9/11, and any president would have followed up with a counterstrike against the Taliban. Yet the Bush administration, like the Argentine junta, derived enormous political benefit from the impulse of a nation at war to rally around its leader.
Another president might have refrained from exploiting that surge of support for partisan gain; Mr. Bush didn't.
And his administration has sought to perpetuate the war psychology that makes such exploitation possible.
Step by step, the fight against Al Qaeda became a universal "war on terror," then a confrontation with the "axis of evil," then a war against all evil everywhere. Nobody knows where it all ends.
What is clear is that whenever political debate turns to Mr. Bush's actual record in office, his popularity sinks. Only by doing whatever it takes to change the subject to the war on terror - not to what he's actually doing about terrorist threats, but to his "leadership," whatever that means - can he get a bump in the polls.
Last week's convention made it clear that Mr. Bush intends to use what's left of his heroic image to win the election, and early polls suggest that the strategy may be working. What can John Kerry do?
Campaigning exclusively on domestic issues won't work. Mr. Bush must be held to account for his dismal record on jobs, health care and the environment. But as Mr. Hedges writes, when war psychology makes a public yearn to believe in its leaders, "there is little that logic or fact or truth can do to alter the experience."
To win, the Kerry campaign has to convince a significant number of voters that the self-proclaimed "war president" isn't an effective war leader - he only plays one on TV.
This charge has the virtue of being true. It's hard to find a nonpartisan national security analyst with a good word for the Bush administration's foreign policy. Iraq, in particular, is a slow-motion disaster brought on by wishful thinking, cronyism and epic incompetence.
If I were running the Kerry campaign, I'd remind people frequently about Mr. Bush's flight-suit photo-op, when he declared the end of major combat. In fact, the war goes on unabated. News coverage of Iraq dropped off sharply after the supposed transfer of sovereignty on June 28, but as many American soldiers have died since the transfer as in the original invasion.
And I'd point out that while Mr. Bush spared no effort preparing for his carrier landing - he even received underwater survival training in the White House pool - he didn't prepare for things that actually mattered, like securing and rebuilding Iraq after Baghdad fell.
Will it work? I don't know. But to win, Mr. Kerry must try to puncture the myth that Mr. Bush's handlers have so assiduously created.
I agree with the bulk of this commentary completely. I find it completely distasteful that the president is largely campaigning via scare tactics and propaganda. Let's distract from the open wound that is our economy. Let's distract from the 1,000+ lives lost in Iraq, the bulk of which were lost after the war officially ended. Let's all exploit those who died in 9/11 so I can have a heroic image (this, I find egregiously unforgivable). Let's muddy the waters-- casting shadows on Kerry's record to distract from the fact that Bush drank his way through Vietnam, never serving at all. I did some reading about this Swift Boat nonsense. The bulk of the kerfluffle? Was the enemy firing when Kerry helped pull a comrade to safety? Some (on Kerry's boat) say yes. Some (on the sinking boat) say no. This is ridiculous. Regardless, people were plucked out of the damn river and lives were preserved.
This is dirty politics at its filthiest, and I cannot fathom another four years filled with the absolute horseshit that is the Protection of Marriage Act and the Patriot Act and... well, just about every piece of legislation Bush has proposed that is aimed at narrowing the freedoms of others.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin.
Our ammendments live on. Peaceful protestors being arrested? Taxpaying citizens being denied equal rights? Womens' rights to control over their own bodies being threatened? This is not America. This is a dictatorship in training.
I need a political icon. The election draws nigh. People, if you haven't registered to vote, do it. Time is running out, and in this election, every vote will matter.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:38 pm (UTC)As to a political icon, a "W" with a red circle around it and line through it is simple and to the point.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 03:22 pm (UTC)"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." Adolf Hitler
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 03:24 pm (UTC)brainless dupe ofloyal supporter of The Shrub."War psychology" ... Reagan started "The War on Drugs" but it was a dismal failure except as a propaganda machine. And there have been other non-war wars too -- the war on crime, the war on poverty, etc etc -- each stirring up support for whoever started banging the non-war war drums for a shorter and shorter period of time. So obviously they've had to escalate back up to a "real" war again.
I am all nicely registered to vote. But so many of my relatives, neighbors (in a Democratic town, yet!) and "friends" are going to vote the other way. If I didn't already have depression, this would give it to me.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 05:39 pm (UTC)I just got registered in Calloway County and was very excited at the thought that our college is enabling us to vote without absentee ballots. That's very cool.
I should really get a "vote" icon. It's important. Moreso than bitching about "if he wins". (But I think I will keep my Gertrude for a while. Because she's cool.)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 05:52 pm (UTC)well said.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 08:18 pm (UTC)I don't know if it makes things better or worse that he doesn't realize it.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-15 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-14 09:36 pm (UTC)I just read this entry before going to bed and though it scares me that there are still people who blindly support Bush, its comforting to know that I'm not alone in being disgusted with him, his administration and the closed-minds of people who support his views. I just hope that people like us make it to the polls.
Bush is disgusting. I despise hypocrites. If someone like Mother Theresa wanted to tell me who I could/could not marry or what I could/could not do with my body - I could at least deal with it somewhat because she was this amazing person. But....... BUSH?! It's laughable that he is so narcissitic that he feels qualified to make such judgements against people. I would be here all night writing about what an idiot he is, but when it boils right down to it - he's just...a dangerous idiot who doesn't think before he acts. This is what idiots like him do to innocent people (http://www.helpjacque.com/).
no subject
Date: 2004-09-15 05:03 pm (UTC)...but when it boils right down to it - he's just...a dangerous idiot who doesn't think before he acts.
Or worse yet-- thinks about it, but decides the risk is worth it as long as he can spin it into something the American people will buy as "heroic."
no subject
Date: 2004-09-14 09:39 pm (UTC)www.helpjacqui.com (http://www.helpjacqui.com/)